1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technical field of an information editing apparatus, an information editing method, and an information recording medium on which a program for controlling edit is recorded so as to be read by a computer. More particularly, the invention relates to a technical field of an information editing apparatus and method for editing recording information already recorded on a write-once recording medium, and an information recording medium on which a program for controlling edit is recorded so as to be read by a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the recording density of a recording medium such as an optical disk is increasing in recent years, the recording density of a recording medium on which information can be recorded only once but cannot be overwritten (hereinafter, referred to as a write-once recording medium), such as what is called a DVD-R (DVD-Recordable) is also becoming remarkably higher.
The recording information recorded on the write-once recording medium usually includes not only the recording information itself such as music information or image information to be reproduced but also reproduction control information (generally, also called navigation information) indicative of a reproduction mode, which is specifically a reproduction order of plural recording information, the number of reproduction times, a reproduction range, or the like.
Assuming now that an editing process of deleting all or a part of recording information already recorded on the write-once recording medium, since information can be written only once to the write-once recording medium as described above, the original reproduction control information is not overwritten with the edited reproduction control information but the whole edited reproduction control information is quite separately and newly recorded in an available area at that time.
When the editing process is seen from the user's point of view, however, the available capacity decreases in spite of no newly added recording information. Finally, although any recording information is not additionally increased, the editing process becomes to be impossible.
In this case, a problem occurs such that the user who has repeated the editing process misunderstands or erroneously recognizes the editing process which becomes impossible to be performed as a failure of the information editing apparatus.
Since the editing process becomes impossible to be performed without any information provided, there is also a problem such that an unnecessary and preliminary editing process is repeated and a necessary editing process cannot be executed.